Redface, like blackface, is a sin of white supremacy

Blackface is a damnable blot on the nation’s history. Today many Americans recognize it, belatedly, as the abomination it always was.

Redface, too, is a damnable blot, though so common in our time it is nearly invisible.

This contradiction puzzles Kevin Gover, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. He is a citizen of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and lives in Virginia, where he has followed the burgeoning blackface scandal in state government.